Mark Cooley is an interdisciplinary artist interested in exploring the intersections of art, activism and institutional critique in a variety of contexts. Subjects of particular interest are U.S. foreign policy, corporate culture, and the political economy of new technologies. Recently, Mark has focused his attention on food production and consumption and the ways in which artists may mediate in these processes.

several data visualizations, some text-oriented & some based on a geographical map, that outline the regions, the names (many unknown) & nationalities of the people that 'disappeared' during the mass detentions that were carried out after 9/11 in the US. [disappearedinamerica.org]

Thanks to everybody who commented on my text ³Remix and Remixability²
(November 16, 2005). It was provoked by reading about web 2.0 and all the
exitement and hype (as always) around it, so indeed I am ³following the
mainstream view² in certain ways. But I would like to make it clear that
ultimately we are talking about something which does not just apply to RSS,
social bookmarking, or Web Services. We are talking about the logic of
modularity which extends beoynd the Web and digital culture.

Modularity has been the key principle of modern mass production. Mass
production is possible because of the standarisation of parts and how they
fit with each other - i.e. modularity. Although there are historical
precedents for mass production, until twentieth cenrtuy they have separate
histroical cases. But soon after Ford installs first moving assembly lines
at his factory in 1913, others follow, and soon modularity permuates most
areas of modern society. ("An assembly line is a manufacturing process in
which interchangeable parts are added to a product in a sequential manner to
create an end product.") Most products we use are mass produced, which means
they are modular, i.e. they consist from standardised mass produced parts
which fit together in standardised way. Moderns also applied modulary
principle outside of factory. For instance, already in 1932 ­ longe before
IKEA and Logo sets ­ belgian designer Louis Herman De Kornick developed
first modular furniture suitable for smaller council flats being built at
the time...

Richard Lanham, the godfather of electronic text, has written a wonderful piece in Academic Commons
calling for a course in copyright for all undergraduates. Lanham, a
UCLA English professor who has had a significant second career as an
expert witness in copyright cases, gives one of the more cogent
summaries of the copyright morass we find ourselves in as the digital
tide overwhelms previous notions of property and ownership.

Meant to post about this last week but it got lost in the shuffle... In
case anyone missed it, Tarleton Gillespie of Cornell has published a good piece
in Inside Higher Ed about how sneaky settings in course management
software are effectively eating away at fair use rights in the academy.
Public debate tends to focus on the music and movie industries and the
ever more fiendish anti-piracy restrictions they build into their
products (the latest being the horrendous "analog hole"). But a similar thing is going on in education and it is decidely under-discussed.[...]

Fair use is what oxygenates the bloodstream of education, allowing
ideas to be ideas, not commodities. Universities, and their primary
fair use organs, libraries, shouldn't be subjected to the same
extortionist policies of the mainstream copyright regime, which, like
some corrupt local construction authority, requires dozens of permits
to set up a simple grocery store. Fair use was written explicitly into law in 1976 to guarantee protection. But the market tends to find a way, and code is its latest, and most insidious, weapon.

Amazingly, few academics are speaking out. John Holbo, writing on The Valve, wonders:

Why aren’t academics - in the humanities in particular -
more exercised by recent developments in copyright law? Specifically ...